The Importance of Mineral-Free Water
in the Plating Industry
A. E. Chester
Director of Research
Promat Division, Poor & Company
Waukegan, Illinois
In an early German text on electroplating, first published about
the time of our Civil War, the author comments on the necessity of
pure water for the successful deposition of metals as follows:
With the exception of the baths prepared with glycerin according to the patent of Marino, water is the solvent used in the preparation of all baths, and its constitution is by no means of such
slight importance as is frequently supposed.
This was certainly forward thinking and a surprisingly astute piece
of information for the troubled electroplater of that period. However,
the same author in the same text, describing the ideal layout of the
plating establishment, argues himself into a contradictory position, to
say the least, regarding the requisite purity of the water supply.  He says:
Without water, the electrodeposition of metals is impossible;
the success of the process depending in the first place on the careful
cleansing of the metallic articles to be electroplated, and for that
purpose water, nay, much water, hot and cold, is required. . . .
Large establishments should, therefore, be provided with pipes for
the admission and discharge of water, one conduit terminating as a
rose over the table where the articles are freed from grease. In
smaller establishments, where the introduction of a system of water
pipes would be too expensive, provision must be made for the frequent renewal of the cleansing water in the various vats.
Obviously, the bucket brigade was not an American invention.
Strangely enough the same contradictory position regarding the necessity of mineral-free water or, let us say, impurity-free water, for electroplating usage that prevailed in Europe in the early phases of the art has
prevailed for years between the practicing plater and the technologist in
the United States. No electrochemist is willing to speak with final
authority about the effect of impurities in an electroplating solution—
and most certainly the production plater is only too willing to completely ignore the whole matter.
The situation is best summed up by the report of Dr. Dwight T.
Ewing, project director of the A.E.S. Research Project No. 5, titled
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